Keeping University Websites Accessible is Complicated

While lists of tools and services are useful, their applicability and suitability depend on context. To that end we have a few observations.

Whether addressing website accessibility is internally (re-design) or externally (regulatory pressure) motivated, a fundamental question can be: which sites need testing?
Larger universities with sprawling web estates of internally and externally hosted sites may not know all of the sites within their scope. Regulators and visitors aren’t concerned with ownership technicalities. It all looks like one website. You may need to start by identifying all the sites in a web estate.

Automated testing is the essence of computer programming: exhaustively cycling through algorithms. In this case, comparing web page elements against guidelines (usually, WCAG2.0). But, parts of WCAG2.0 aren’t amenable to automation. They require human intervention. For example, automated tests find missing ALT attributes, but don’t verify the descriptions being used are appropriate. Automated testing can do some, but not all of the work.

When the need for manual intervention is combined with variations in test logic implementation, it’s unlikely that only one tool or service will work in under all conditions. In other words, one tool can do some, but not all of the work.

We’ve only included tools and services that analyse page structure, as this process represents the greatest opportunity for testing-at-scale and is the biggest challenge across complex pages and large websites.

We’ve limited the list to tools/services that appear to be under continuous development or have been brought to market within the last five years. Tools testing to current standards with regular update releases are of more value to time-pressed higher education web teams than dated, but free, open source projects.

Paul Bradley

I’ve worked as an engineer, a technology research analyst, a software project manager, a management consultant, a chief compliance officer and a chief operating officer.
I focus on fact finding, problem solving and evidence-based decision making. I’ve also survived two start-ups.
At eQAfy, we help higher education institutions manage, monitor and audit the websites in their web estates so they can meet their marketing and communications objectives, improve user experiences and reduce risk exposures.